Down the Road
by sapphireswimming
Summary: Nearly a decade has passed since there was any trouble in Amity Park but now the Winchesters can't get there fast enough.


**Yayyyy happy 100th story to me~ **

**I honestly can't believe that this has actually happened and that I've gotten far enough to hit this milestone? Like I can still remember writing _Tinker Bell_ on the bus coming back to campus from a swim meet. And asking Liv if it was worth setting up an account for and then asking her to walk me through everything. Helping me decide on a username. And making me an icon.**

**I can honestly say that my life would not be the same if Liv had not introduced me to fandom and fanfiction and Danny Phantom and pretty much every show I'm into these days, haha. You guys have been the best ever and I know that I fail and replying sometimes, but your reviews and conversations and flailing with me over ideas have gotten me through some really really really tough times in my life these past few years and I really wanted to say thank you for that. For encouraging me to write ninety more fics than I ever thought I would produce in my lifetime. And I know that like _Turning Pages_ has slowed down but I have no plans to stop writing any time soon. It is the thing I love most in the world and I still have too many ideas in my head to ever consider getting down on paper so yeah I'm gonna continue writing forever I think. C:**

**I wanted to post something special as my 100th because alsdfkhs I still can't even believe this and tumblr people made some great suggestions about what kind of story would befit the occasion so I'm pulling out a fic that I've been working on since last summer. It's really long for me and I'm extremely proud of it and, well, superphantom seems to have become my thing, so. **

**I hope you all enjoy! This one is for all of you guys. For sticking with me and reading my stuff and helping my writing get better. And above all, for Danny Phantom SG-1, my creator (even though she doesn't like supernatural aha sorry Liv. you should never have mentioned watching all what? two episodes of this crazy show. XD).**

**Oh! and thanks to dannyboymw for the title.**

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><p>So details.<p>

**Timelines:** Future fic for Danny Phantom, takes place ten years after the show begins. Set in Supernatural Season 8 but before the first trial and THERE ARE SOME MAJOR SPOILERS THROUGH SEASON 5 IN CASE YOU HAVEN'T GOTTEN THAT FAR.

K plus for a little language. Keeping it as clean as the Winchesters will let me. ;)

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><p><strong>Down the Road<strong>

November 17, 2014

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><p>They came as soon as they heard. Demonic signs in Amity Park, a town that had had no supernatural entities except for ghosts for ten years now. Trust them, the Winchesters had checked. Thoroughly. And always kept an eye on the town, even once they'd deemed it safe. Well, not <em>safe<em>, but under control, at least.

But now that had changed. Something had blipped on a computer, one of their contacts had mentioned something over the phone, and Sam and Dean had made a run for it, driving across the country as fast as the impala would take them flying over asphalt.

They'd called the Fentons several times along the way, wanting to know what things looked like from their end, but were unable to get a hold of anyone. Straight to voicemail every time. Which could have meant anything from there was nothing to worry about and they were wrapped up in some new project in the basement, to they were out fighting demons without knowing what on earth they were up against, to they were already dead.

Not even vaguely reassuring, no matter how much Sam wished the first (quite possible) scenario to be true.

At the end of their harried and tight-lipped trip, they pulled up in front of Fenton Works with a screech of tires that Dean would worry about the implications of later, and all but kicked the door open, packs of all their anti-demonic wards and weapons slung over their shoulders.

"Jack?" Dean barked to the farthest reaches of the house. "Maddie?"

As he walked downstairs to check out the basement lab, Sam picked up his panicked call heading toward the stairs, "Jazz? Danny? Somebody here?"

There were long moments when nobody answered and dread grew in the pit of his stomach at what that implied. But then, a shuffling came from somewhere above him and a voice trickled down, "Who's there?"

"It's Sam Winchester!" he called back.

More shuffling. "It's the Winchesters," the person he'd talked to relayed to someone behind them.

Then, "Oh thank goodness, maybe they know what's going on."

Sam heaved a sigh of relief now that they'd found Fentons alive. Even if all did not seem well, it sounded like their assistance was welcomed and would help solve whatever was wrong. He hoped so, at least. But first things first.

"Dean!" he yelled over his shoulder, "they're up here!"

A muffled, "Coming!" was followed by pounding footsteps and Dean appeared just as several figures came out of a doorway at the end of the hall. Two girls in their mid twenties. The redhead in black and teal was obviously Jazz, the Fenton's oldest. The black haired girl dressed in a more somber black and violet get up took another moment to place. Sam. Sam Manson. Danny's longtime girlfriend. Fiancée now. They'd gotten the announcement and invitation a couple months back, notable not only because of the news it contained but because it was the first piece of mail delivered to the bunker and had had Sam smiling like an idiot (we've got _mail_, Dean!) for the rest of the day.

"What is it? What's going on?" Dean asked, breathless from exertion and hours of barely reined in panic. They had too few friends left to lose and they weren't about to see any more go the way of the demons.

"It's Danny," Sam replied, one slender hand unable to make its way from her face. "He… he won't come out."

"Alright, won't come out of where?" Sam coaxed patiently.

"The Ops Center," Jazz replied, voice tight and controlled. "Locked himself up there a couple hours ago and we've all been trying to convince him to come out since."

Sam and Dean made eye contact long enough to know they were both on the same page. Get to Danny. Sam motioned to the girls to lead the way.

"What's wrong? Why'd he lock himself up?" Dean asked as they began walking back to the room at the end of the hall.

"We don't know," Sam said, more nervous than they had ever heard her. "He's been acting a little off all week, but then a couple hours ago he totally freaked. We don't know why."

"How did he freak out? What did he do?" Sam asked. Details. The devil's in the details.

Neither girl answered as they walked into the room to greet a strange sight. Tucker Foley curled in the corner, Maddie hovering over him with the contents of a first aid kit spread in a semi circle around her.

Jack stood in front of a control board, talking into a microphone, "Danny Boy, can you hear me? Just come down and we'll talk about this. Everything's going to be okay…" His normally boisterous voice seemed subdued, weary, as if he had been at this for hours with nothing to show for it.

Sam walked forward and knelt down next to her best friend, rubbing a hand along his shoulder and explaining that help had come. Tucker's head lifted and they could see the bloody nose. Without his glasses, he needed to squint to see the figures still standing across the room, but he soon gave it up when he realized how many muscles around his eyes were also connected to the nerve centers around his nose. Instead he nodded with downcast eyes and trusted Sam's word that all would be okay soon.

When the Winchesters turned to her for an explanation, Jazz said, "Danny was really edgy this morning. Sam and Tucker were over, trying to help calm him down. And then all of a sudden, Danny just… I don't know how to say it… he freaked out. All of a sudden, he was looking at Tucker like he was a ghost." She cringed at her choice of words. "Or… you know what I mean. He punched him in the face, pushed him away, and then flew up to the Ops Center and locked down all the controls. We can't get up to him and he won't come down." She looked worriedly at her father, still trying to convince Danny to rejoin them. "We're lucky he didn't take off, really. He could have been flying anywhere in the world by now… but…"

"But he didn't want to get away," Sam said. Jazz looked at him and nodded. "He just wanted to get somewhere safe."

"You guys were lucky all Danny did was get a punch in," Dean said with a pained expression. "Kid really knows how to move. If his instinct had been fight instead of flight…" he left the idea hang heavy in the air and they all turned to Tucker, who, as if sensing their attention on him, huddled even closer in on himself, letting Maddie rewrap the burned hand he held out.

"But…" Jazz began, suddenly looking at the brothers with new eyes. "How did you guys get here? How did you know… we didn't call yet…"

"We got a tip from the grapevine that there was some demonic activity centering on Amity. Came as soon as we heard. Didn't know things were going to be this messed up in your house," Dean answered.

Jazz's eyes flicked back and forth between the brothers as she began to breathe raggedly. "You guys don't think… I mean… this isn't… demons…" Her expression said that she remembered all too well the stories Sam and Dean had told them, years ago, about their several encounters with the creatures. "Danny's not being possessed or anything, is he?"

Sam's forehead bunched sympathetically as he said, "To be honest, Jazz, we don't know what's going on. We need to talk to Danny to find out."

"Good luck with that because Dad's been talking at him for an hour now and Danny hasn't said anything."

"Well, I'll go see if he wants to talk to me," Sam said, and walked off to Jack's side.

Dean didn't leave yet but studied Jazz for a long moment. "Has he said anything since going up there?" he asked quietly.

Jazz sniffed and tucked an unruly strand of hair behind her turquoise headband. "Yeah, at first, he said that he wasn't going to come down. And he told us to tell Tucker he was sorry. But hasn't said anything after we told him how Tuck was doing. Don't know if he's even listening anymore. But all of the shields are up, so we know he hasn't gone anywhere."

Dean nodded thoughtfully. "You know, I don't think he's possessed. You don't have to worry about that."

"How do you know?" she challenged.

"People who are possessed… they aren't in control of what it is they're doing," he explained. "They're awake for it, sometimes, but can't break free. Pulling his punches? Apologizing to Tucker? That doesn't sound like any demon to me. That sounds like it's all Danny," he said with a bit of a lopsided smirk.

Jazz huffed softly. "Yeah," she finally agreed, though she continued chewing the inside of her lip.

"But if it is a possession," Dean continued soberly, "then he broke free long enough to know what he did to Tucker and what he might be forced to do again. Maybe he's up there to protect all of you from himself. The Ops Center is the most secure place around here. He's got all of those shields up and controls locked down, maybe it's to keep him _in_." He smiled softly. "But Sam and I have dealt with demons before. We know how this works and we have what we need to get it out."

Dean cracked a grin. "Sammy's got the best Latin I've ever heard and trust me when I tell you that that's saying something because a couple years ago we tangled with a couple ghosts of Catholic priests murdered in the sixteen hundreds." He paused, more serious now. "It's going to be okay, Jazz," he put a hand on her shoulder and pretended he didn't see her wiping the tears from her eyes.

He walked over to the control panel in time for him to see Jack persuaded into handing the microphone over to Sam, who bent his head, long hair falling across his face, and said, "Hey, Danny. It's Sam. Winchester. Dean and I just got in town. Caught wind of some demon stuff starting up around here and thought we'd touch base with you guys. But… it sounds like you already know what it is, Danny, don't you?" he paused, looking up at Dean for support. "You want to talk about it?" he offered in his most comforting voice. "Let us know what's going on?"

Sam bit his lip, hoping for an answer but getting nothing but silence for long enough that he was about to try again when the radio buzzed with static.

Danny was breathing hard on the other side. "I'm not coming down," he said defiantly.

"Nobody asked you to," Sam replied immediately, a glance to the side cutting off all protests from Jack.

Everyone else in the room shuffled over as soon as they heard that radio silence had been broken and there had been a response.

"I just want to talk, Danny. Dean and I need to figure out what's going on." He waited for a moment before continuing, "Can you tell us what happened?"

There was a shuffling on the other end. "Don' wanna," Danny said, sounding as petulant as a little kid throwing a tantrum, but both Sam and Dean were well acquainted with it enough to hear the layer of fear his tone was trying to cover up.

"Danny…" Sam drew out. "If you don't want to talk over the radio, you don't have to."

"Not comin' down," he said shortly.

"You don't have to do that either. If you want, we could come up and talk to you there."

"I…" Danny swallowed hard. "But what if I…?"

He let the thought trail off but they all heard what he wasn't saying. _What if I hurt you like I did Tucker?_

"It could just be me and Dean, if you want, Danny. You know we know how to defend ourselves."

"No… I…" he trailed off.

Sam rubbed his nose and sighed. "Or it could just be me," he offered despite the glare he knew Dean would give him the second he said the words. "Just you and me. I'm not going to do anything to you, you're not going to hurt me, we're just going to talk, and nothing's going to happen."

"O-okay," Danny agreed, like he was scared he would change his mind at any minute. Everyone in the room below seemed worried about that too.

"Alright, I'll be up as soon as you unlock the door for me, buddy."

"Just you," Danny warned sharply.

"Yeah, just me, Danny."

"Okay," he said and broke radio contact. Lights on the control panel began blinking and beeping as Danny manipulated the buttons on the other side. Soon, the circle in the middle of the floor was activated and ready to take one passenger up to the Ops Center.

Sam walked to it, Dean trailing close behind, handing him one of the duffel bags they'd dropped off at the entrance to the room, an unspoken conversation in fervent eyes and intense hand grasps.

Then Sam stepped onto the plate and grinned back at his brother. "Beam me up, Scotty," he quipped, and disappeared a few seconds later.

He blinked at the change in light. It was dark up here on this top floor and, for a few terrifying seconds, he couldn't see anything. After a tense moment of barely breathing, he had adjusted to the slightly green tinted light and could flick eyes from side to side and take in the control panel, the chairs, and, over in the very back, curled up against the wall, Danny.

Sam began walking over, very slowly, being careful not to make any sudden movements. He still didn't know what the situation was, but spooking Danny was at the very bottom of the list of bad ideas. Hands harmlessly out to his sides, eyes soft, and voice murmuring that he was about to come closer accompanied his short walk across the space he hadn't been in since the Fentons gave him the grand tour of the place so many years ago.

He had been surprised at the brightness of the space, then. Bulletproof glass windows running around the entire perimeter, granting a fantastic view of the city, and the world, when converted to a blimp and flown out of the place (but remember, only in case of emergency, kids). The windows were all covered with steel shutters, now, and the barely noticeable humming and glow gently illuminating the area told him that the ghost shield was up as well. Every single protection this place had to offer was in play.

Danny was scared of something. Really scared.

He flinched when Sam came within reach, so instead of offering physical comfort, he stopped and sat down at long arm's length, curling his arms around his own body much like Danny was doing opposite him.

"Hey," he said, smiling softly.

Danny looked at him, but otherwise made no response.

Sam fiddled with his hands a moment, wondering how to start figuring out what was going on.

"You okay?"

Danny pinned him with a stare that didn't need words.

Sam laughed a bit. "Yeah, stupid question…" he trailed off when Danny suddenly stiffened and began looking around him like something was lurking in the shadows.

"What is it?" he whispered.

Danny looked at him in surprise. "You don't hear it?"

Sam shook his head slowly. "I don't hear anything. What do you hear?"

The black haired kid swallowed hard a couple times before whispering, "Barking."

"Barking?" Sam asked with a scrunched forehead. "From what dogs?"

"Big ones," Danny replied. "Mean ones. They're coming after me."

Suddenly, Sam went still. For a moment, he wasn't sure that he would have been able to move even if he had wanted to. Dogs that only the person they were coming after could hear. He hoped beyond hope that this didn't mean what he was sure it did. Not this. Not again.

"How long have you been hearing them, Danny?" he asked as soon as he found his voice again.

Danny's eyes flickered around as he thought. "Couple days, now. It's been getting worse."

"Worse?"

He nodded. "At first, I couldn't hear 'em. Just felt like something was wrong. You know how you get that feeling and everything stands up on the back of your neck and you look over your shoulder and don't see anything but you know it's there, just waiting for you?"

"Yeah," Sam breathed. He'd lived with that feeling tingling up his spine since he was six months old.

"It was like that. And then I started hearing them. Thought I was just hearing things at first, because Sam and Tuck couldn't hear anything. Then I thought I was losing my mind, because it started happening more and more." He licked his lips. "But then…"

"Something else started happening, too, didn't it?"

Danny looked up, not knowing how Sam knew, but nodded. "Now I'm seeing things. Scary things, Sam. This morning, I thought that Tucker…" he faltered, "that Tucker was something else. And I attacked him. Broke his nose and blasted him and who knows what else before it was gone and I was just seeing him again. I don't know what it was, but I panicked. And I couldn't do that again, so…"

"So you came up here?"

Danny nodded.

"So that you wouldn't hurt anyone else." It wasn't a question.

He nodded again.

"And… because it's the safest place you know of. And they're coming for you."

Danny made a small whimpering noise in the back of his throat at the reminder and he nodded miserably, dropping his head into his arms.

"Danny," Sam began gently, "Dean and I came out here because we heard that demons were up to something. And now I know what it is."

Danny peeked out at Sam with one eye, the expression in it torn between hope and dread. Demons didn't sound good but answers did and it sounded like Sam had them.

"That's a hell hound that's after you, Danny. The crossroad demons control them, send them out."

"Why… why is it after me?" he asked shakily.

Sam eyed him carefully. "You don't know?"

Danny shook his head. "Haven't ever seen a demon before. Didn't think I'd done anything to tick one off. I just fight the ghosts that come through the portal… Sam, why is it after me?"

"Well," Sam sighed, "Danny, it… sounds like you made a deal with a demon."

Danny jerked back like he'd been hit in the face. "Made a deal with a demon?" he asked, shocked and outraged, voice louder than a whisper for the first time since Sam had come up. "Why on earth would I make a deal with a demon?"

"I don't know," Sam said. "You might not have known it was one. It would have looked like a normal person, someone who offered you something ten years ago? Is there anyone like that? Asked if you wanted something? Asked if it could do anything for you?" he fished for answers. "Something happen ten years ago today, or tomorrow?"

Danny was quiet, but Sam could tell the moment he'd thought of something because his eyes and body froze. "The portal," he whispered. "The portal started up ten years ago. We were going to have a party tomorrow to celebrate."

Sam canted his head. "Did something happen when the portal opened?"

"Yeah," Danny whispered, eyes suddenly clouded with a different kind of haunting and voice oddly disconnected. "I was inside."

"In… inside?" Sam asked in confusion. "But if you were inside when a portal opened, then wouldn't… you… be…?"

Danny looked back at him with a sharp look. "Dead?" he asked with what was supposed to be a wry smile but soon ended when his lip began to tremble. "Yeah. Everyone said it was a miracle I survived. I had always thought that, my powers, Phantom, was the side effect, the reason I made it out…" his brow contracted. "But…"

"But… what?" Sam prompted when it looked like Danny was too caught up in memories to speak.

Blue eyes filled with emotion turned back to Sam. "When I was in there," he said. "After I'd hit the button and it started up and everything was going to hell…" he took a few deep breaths. "You can't imagine it, Sam. The light… the energy, the pure energy, it was like I didn't exist anymore. It… it tore me apart… one cell at a time and I knew, I knew I was dying. There were flashes, and colors… colors I've never seen… never seen since. And it felt like I was exploding, like I was everywhere at once and I saw things. I saw things that I've never told anyone about…"

"What kinds of things did you see, Danny?"

His mouth worked up and down as he tried to find the words. "I tried… looking up testimonies once, from people who had almost died, at those NDE meetings, to see if there was anything like it, but… Sam… it was like… seeing everything."

"What do you mean?"

He sighed heavily. "Uh, I mean… watching a seed grow into a full grown tree in about a nanosecond. Having x-ray vision so you can see through your hands, see through the bone, see into the veins and watch the blood cells pumping through you. Watching the Christmas before I was born. Penguins diving into the ocean a thousand miles away. Seeing… _seeing_… the electric code in one of Tuck's PDAs. And my daughter being born… fifteen, twenty years in the future. It was like seeing everything at the same time. And, it was too much. Too much for your brain to handle and it felt like it was falling apart with every new scene getting shoved in." He took a shaky breath. "Guess… they only let you see it if you're going to die anyway," Danny laughed.

"But all that stuff… can't imagine it being real. Thought I hallucinated all of it. And her."

"Her?" Sam asked.

"Yeah," Danny breathed. "A woman. Standing in front of me, in the middle of the portal, of everything unraveling. She looked different because, she was there when everything else was changing, but she didn't seem… eternal. But it wasn't like she could have been real, you know, because I still saw everything around her, through her. And nobody else was in there with me and Sam and Tuck never saw anyone else, because I asked them one time and they both looked at me like I was crazy. And if she was really in there with me, wouldn't it mean that she was dying too?" Danny was leaning forward now, voice straining as he talked about the things he had convinced himself he'd been hallucinating for ten years, trying to explain it away, trying to make it something other than it was.

"She said something to you, didn't she?" Sam said gently, already knowing the answer.

Danny's face crumpled as he looked up at Sam. "She said… she said she could save me if I wanted. I wouldn't have the same life, but if she gave me this second chance, I could make a better life." He paused, fumbling for words that tumbled out brokenly. "I was dying, Sam. It was killing me and it _hurt_, and it took forever and I didn't think that there would be a price tag; I didn't even think she could do it. I didn't even know she was actually there, but I didn't want to die, so I said yes. I screamed: Yes! And… somehow I walked out of there alive. Or, half alive," he finished miserably.

"I thought," he said with a bitter laugh when Sam hadn't said anything, "I thought she was my guardian angel, you know, during the times I thought she might have been real. Giving me that, telling… telling me that I should use my abilities to help people. And now… you're telling me…?"

"That she was a demon?" Sam said softly, wishing he didn't have to speak. "Yeah. I'm pretty sure she was. Most of the time, you have to go find them to make a deal. Find a crossroads; bury a box with the right stuff and you have yourself a demonic genie. But I've known a few to reach out to desperate people. People who didn't have time to think about the fine print. But there's always fine print, Danny. All the deals come with a price tag."

"What is it?" he asked haggardly, knowing that he didn't want to know.

"Danny… after ten years… the demon comes back. For your soul."

"What does it do with my soul?"

"It takes it down to hell. Forever," Sam replied, throat closing down.

"And… if I don't want to give it up so easily?"

"That's why they send the hell hounds. Nobody ever wants to give it up easily."

"I'm…" Danny set his mouth and took in a deep breath. "I'm not going to live through this, am I?"

He looked up with glossy blue eyes and Sam realized with a pang just how young he was. Twenty-four. About to get married, his whole life in front of him. Just around the age when he'd been pulled back into the world of hunting after living his few precious years of "normal." And Danny had been tangling with ghosts for years before that. He'd only been fourteen when he made the deal. Too young. Far too young. And he didn't even know he had been making a deal. Sam pushed down a curse. He had always known that the world wasn't fair, but he hated being reminded of it.

He shook his head as his features hardened. "You are if Dean and I have anything to say about it."

Danny searched his face, trying to find a sliver of hope. "You been up against these things before?"

Sam nodded as he bit his lip. "Yeah."

"Any luck?"

Sam thought about Dean's mangled corpse on the table at midnight, Ellen cradling Jo as she set off the matrix of homemade bombs, Bela, and the artist, and the architect, and the…

"Not much," he admitted. "But that won't stop us from trying," he added as the young man's face sunk into despair. "We're going to get it, Danny," he promised. "We're going to stop it. The hell hounds won't get you."

But suddenly, Danny wasn't looking at him, but looking through him, horrified and he scrambled away even though there was nowhere else to go. Feeling cornered, he built up an ectoblast in his palm and Sam quickly scurried away, saying, "Danny? Danny, it's me, it's Sam. That's the hallucination again, but it's not real, okay, just like it wasn't real with Tucker…"

He risked a glance around the chair when he saw the light from Danny's fist die out. The kid was shivering in a tiny huddle in the corner, curled up on himself as far as he would go. Looking dangerously close to crying.

"It's okay, Danny," Sam reassured as he ran over to the radio to contact the floor below. They needed to know what was going on. Dean needed to know what to prepare them for.

After pushing the right series of buttons, the channels were open. "Dean," he said, heartbeat still racing.

"Yeah, Sammy," came the immediate reply as if his brother had been glued to the set, which he probably had been. "You know what's wrong?"

"Yeah," Sam said with a short, shaky exhale.

"Okay," Dean drawled with what might have been an eye roll in other circumstances when there was nothing more to the reply. "So what are we dealing with? Guessing it's not possession since you're still talking."

"No, it's not," Sam confirmed.

Everyone standing around Dean sighed in relief. It had been the main worry, once demons had been mentioned.

But then Sam continued talking. "Do we have any more goofer dust?"

Dean froze, face paling so fast that the Fentons thought he was going to drop onto the floor in front of them. "Sammy," he said, voice strained.

"Do we have any more goofer dust?" his brother asked again in voice much calmer than it had any right to be.

Dean recovered himself enough to mentally catalogue their trunk and answer, "Yeah, a little. Whatever we were able to sweep up from last time. But… it's not like we ever had that much to begin with," he warned, voice dangerously close to breaking.

"I know," Sam replied. "Bring up whatever's left and we'll mix it with the salt. You know what else to grab. I'm going to stay up here with Danny."

"Yeah," Dean said, swallowing heavily and nodding. "Yeah, okay. We'll give 'em the works." He turned away, about to run down to the impala before he stopped and hit the call button on the radio again. "Hey, how much time do we have?"

There was a thoughtful pause before the answer came, "Not too long, Dean. I'm guessing midnight."

"I'll be back in ten," Dean said. "Let me up then."

He set down the transmitter and closed his eyes, drowning out the rest of the world as he began to curse long and hard. Then, the moment he had allowed himself was over and he ran a hand down his face, lifting his head and faced the concerned faces surrounding him.

"Okay," he sighed, "all the salt in the house, from the neighbors, anything that you can get a hold of. Any cans of spray paint, house paint, big sharpies, anything you can get."

Then turning to Tucker, who didn't seem to be in any condition to run up and down stairs lugging around the fifty pound bags of driveway salt Sam and Dean had convinced the Fentons to keep on hand at all times. "Go get Danny's ipod and the best noise canceling headphones you can find." The young man nodded gratefully, happy to be given a task he could handle given his injuries.

"What's the plan?" Jack asked.

"Graffitying the Ops Center," Dean replied tersely, already heading out the door. Everyone followed closely on his heels. "We have a lot of sigils and wards that need to go up in the next couple hours."

"What are they for?" Sam asked, tucking a stray strand of black hair behind her ear. "Or… against?"

Dean stopped and turned sharply, blocking the parade of bodies going down the hall. "Look," he sighed. "I'm not going to lie to you. This is bad. Danny's got some hell hounds after him."

As he expected, Dean was inundated with questions as soon as he had begun to explain the situation. He ignored all of them, continuing on with his speech. "These are some nasty suckers. Vicious, tenacious, invisible, and not much stops them or slows them down. But we're going to do everything that we think might possibly work and a whole lot more. There's a lot to do and we only have until midnight, so everyone get going and get me some stuff to work with. More instructions when I get back upstairs. Okay?"

His tone made it obvious that the last word was not a question but a final dismissal. Everyone split up to their various tasks. The women ran for the salt and paint while Jack followed Dean out to offer a hand as he decided to all but empty the trunk. Better to be over prepared and have everything at hand than need to run back and forth to the street.

Within minutes, everyone was back to the room beneath the Ops Center.

"Okay," Dean began, hefting a bag he'd filled with all of the cans of spray paint the combined families owned. "I'm going to take this up and start to work on the sigils. I want you to do the same down here."

Handing Jazz a piece of paper with several different symbols drawn out in a careful, if hurried, hand. "This is what they look like. Put them everywhere: walls, ceiling, floors, top of the bedspread. Big, small, just cover everywhere. These are different forms of devil's traps; they'll stop or slow any demonic creature that tries to come through here. Your job is to keep them from getting through this room. First line of defence and we want it to be the only one we need, got it?" Solemn nods before he jerked his chin and they went off to break out the paintbrushes.

"I'll send Sam down to check on you guys in just a bit. Once the room's painted, we'll start with the salt."

Rushing over to the radio, Dean said, "I'm back, Sammy; do your stuff to make sure I can come on up."

Without waiting for a reply, he jogged over to the center of the circle, which started activating.

"I'm coming too!" Sam yelled as she ran over from the other side of the room.

Dean stepped off and pinned her with a glare that would brook no argument. "No, you are not."

But for all that could be said of Dean's perfectly honed glare, it could not be said that Samantha Manson had backed down from anything in her life. And if she wanted to be with her fiancé, she was going to argue with the man who had stared down the devil.

"Why not?" she demanded.

He leaned into her personal space, understanding where she was coming from, but unwilling to lose even one more minute that he could be using to help Danny. Then again, if he could convince Sam here and now that they needed to go along with his plan and just do whatever he said without questioning it, the better the rest of this hellish day would be.

"Because Danny's freaking out right now," he whispered, eying the other figures in the room and making sure they weren't within earshot. The truth about hell hounds was ugly and not everyone needed to know what Danny was wrestling with. "Big time. He's been hearing hell hounds coming after him for the past couple days." Sam gasped as she realized that all of those times he had been edgy and she thought him paranoid when he asked if she could hear anything, there had been demon dogs closing in on him. "People are overwhelming right now and even though I know you think you would be helping, you wouldn't because he's started hallucinating. Even if he knows you, he looks over and thinks he's seeing a zombie that wants to eat him and his defences take over."

"That's what happened this morning?" she realized.

"Yeah," Dean said with a jerky nod. "To be honest, Tucker got off pretty lightly, all things considering. Sam and I are the experts here and we're going to be the ones taking care of him right now. Your job is preparing this room and once everything's set up, we'll see what Danny wants to do. But right now, I'm going up alone."

Without even waiting for a response, he stepped backward onto the plate, which activated and whooshed him up to the Ops Center.

Dean stepped forward and shrugged the bag off of his shoulder even before his eyes adjusted to the shuttered protection of the small room.

Sam ran over to the duffel, unpacking the spray paint and going straight to work, thankful for something to do. He was usually the one in their duo that was good at comforting other people, the families of the bereaved, the ones they were trying to prevent from becoming victims, but he didn't know what to do with this. Hadn't ever known what to do with this. Hadn't been able to do anything more than try and then fail to save person after person.

Dean walked over and knelt beside the huddled Danny, pulling him out from against the wall and manipulating his large frame around enough until he could wrap him in a loose hug. Holding on until Danny shakily returned it, Dean whispered gruffly in his ear, "Damn it, kiddo, you sure know how to tangle with the meanest suckers out there, don't you?"

A sob escaped him. "I didn't know!"

"Of course you didn't," Dean said, wrapping a hand over a mop of black hair. "I know they didn't tell you what you were getting into."

"I just… I didn't want to die. She didn't say anything about… anything about this. I didn't want… I just didn't want…" came the broken litany.

"I know, Danny, I know," Dean soothed with a gravelly voice. "I know. It's okay, though. Sammy and me," he looked back at his brother, already making good headway with the spray paint, "we're going to set up so much salt and signs that nothing will be able to get in here. Your family's doing the same downstairs," he encouraged, gently rubbing his free hand up and down Danny's back. "No way those hell hounds are coming through to get to you. They'll have to come through all of us first."

"Dean…" Danny sniffed, not able to voice the enormity of everything happening to him. He didn't need to, though, because Dean had been through all of it himself.

"I know, I know," he repeated, with such conviction that Danny finally picked his head up to look at him. But as soon as his eyes came up, Dean knew he was seeing something else, something terrible. He quickly let go and backed away, hands held up in a classic position of surrender that meant no harm. Turning around so Danny couldn't see his face, he began talking, giving the hyperventilating figure something to latch onto.

"Listen to me, Danny. Listen to my voice, it's just me; nothing has changed, nothing is wrong. What you're seeing isn't real, okay? It's not, you're hallucinating. It's okay; just focus on my voice and it will be gone in a minute, okay? You're fine, it's fine, just ride it out, kiddo."

He glanced over his shoulder and saw Danny with his palms pressed against his eyes, rocking back and forth, trying to force it all away.

"Hey, buddy," he said, inching closer. Danny flinched away from the hand he put on his shoulder but he kept it there. "No, it's okay, look at me," he coaxed. "Look at me." Danny finally did, eyes reluctant to see whatever horror his mind had conceived, but finding only Dean Winchester. Green jacket, blue jeans, leather boots, no melting faces.

"It's okay, see?" he smiled. "Just me."

"But…" Danny stammered, eyes not landing upon anyone or anything around him, "but you were… you were just…"

"I know," Dean said, licking his lips as he tried to formulate the unhappy truth into words. "That's gonna happen again. You're going to see things, and hear things that aren't real. But you have to know that they aren't real and they're going to go away. The things you see that you don't want to be real? None of it is real. You just close your eyes and it will go away."

"Promise?" Danny asked, lost and looking for something to hold on to. Like a little kid, not the nearly grown man, the confident hero of Amity Park that he normally was.

Having hell hounds on your tail for the better part of a week would do that to you.

Dean felt his heart trip a beat as he answered, "Yeah, promise." Then he maneuvered himself so that he was sitting next to Danny, side by side, able to see Sam diligently working on overlapping devil's traps and demonic wards.

They sat in silence for a moment before Danny jerked and slid his eyes over to the side, staring vacantly at a covered window as if he could see beyond it.

"You're doing great, Danny," Dean said after a moment's pause. "You're holding together really well, a lot better than most people would in your situation."

A snort as Danny's attention was pulled away from the phantom barking. "Tell that to Tucker."

Dean waved a hand dismissively. "Nah, Tucker's fine. Just got a bit of a bloody nose, but he could do that tripping over his own two feet. Besides, chicks dig battle scars. He's totally cool with it," Dean smirked before turning a little more somber. "Seriously, though, he wants you to stop beating yourself up just because you reacted to your best friend suddenly looking like something out of Dead Teacher IX."

Danny looked like he was going to protest but Dean cut him off with a change of subject before he was able to start talking. "Here, I brought you your ipod," he said, handing over the small device he'd slid into his pocket. "And there are some construction headphones from the garage in the duffel bag…" he paused to catch the item in question that Sam dug out and threw over, "to put over the ear buds. Noise cancellation," he explained. "Thought the music might be better than those dogs barking, huh?" he smiled sadly.

Danny glanced up with a panicked look on his face. "How did you know? I didn't …"

"I know, Danny; I've been where you are." He watched understanding dawn in the boy's brilliant blue eyes and plowed ahead before the kid asked the inevitable questions he didn't want to, _couldn't_, answer— how did you get away?— and prayed that the fact he was standing here would be enough to tell him that they could get him out.

"And I know it's scary as hell when Hell's coming after you. But you're going to make it through, okay? You are. I promise you that. You are going to make it through until tomorrow. The hell hounds aren't going to get you. They aren't going to take you. That's not going to happen. Not on my watch. Not on Sam's. And not on your friends and family's." He let the pause become significant enough to hopefully drive the point home through the kid's thick skull.

"So guess what?" he asked, with a hint of a smile.

Danny looked at him for the answer.

"It's not happening," he said, never meaning anything more in his life.

* * *

><p><strong>Okay so this is complete on my end. I'd waited over a year to see if I had more to write and consensus is no, so I hope you enjoyed and if you want more, feel free to write it! :D <strong>

** (If you keep this in the canonical Supernatural timeline, Sam and Dean didn't really know how to stop hell hounds during the trials which would come after this point whichwouldmeanthtattheydidn'tfigureitout. But I think this is actually a very optimistic stopping point and I think that between the Fentons and the Winchesters, there is no way that hell hounds would have gotten to Danny. Just no. Happy ending guys, happy ending!)**

**Oh, and NDE stands for Near Death Experience. There are support group meetings that include friends and family that meet all over the country to help people sort through their emotions and experiences. And the Fentons attending such a gathering is an idea I've been thinking about for a while.**


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